A large, plump crescent moon slumped lazily on end just above the Shelburne hills, leaning slightly northward like a giant overripe cantaloupe wedge in the hot, hazy western sky as I drove home from work late Tuesday night. I’m not sure whether its wry grin, mellow orange hue or both got my nostalgic juices flowing, but something stimulated thought about a phone call I had taken a day or two earlier, then immediately transported me back to an untethered youth in that village first called Bloody Brook, then South Deerfield, then, in the Polish-spiced vernacular, Sowdeeeerfeel — the Onion Town, poor sister of The (haughty) Street.

Isn’t it odd how a force of nature like that sultry summer moon can in an instant carry you back a generation and spin your imaginative gears like the chime wheel on a noontime tall clock?

It wasn’t the reported ”mountain goats” that sent me off reminiscing. No, not at all. That was just the updraft that lifted me high above my native town to the North Sugarloaf ridge where they have been seen of late, poking in and out of the ridgeline vegetation above the rusty sandstone cliffs, presumably feeding. A longtime friend and former lightning-rod town official was my source. He said he was sick of the big-cat yarns and had one stitched of a similar thread to share.

It seems he’s been using backyard binoculars to observe the pair of white wayward goats patrolling the North Sugarloaf spine since Memorial Day, but has been reluctant to talk about it for fear of the suspicions that could spread like wildfire in a small town like his. When he first noticed them more than a month ago, he picked up visual white movement that immediately piqued his interest. After all, he’d lived in town all his life and never seen anything like it: white quadrupeds throughout the day between the cliffs and the shelf cave we often visited as prepubescents many years ago, more than we like to admit. Back then we had it good, free rein of a magical hardwood ridge that has apparently become quite public in recent years, bikers and hikers galore working the trails that begin off Hillside Road.

I was thinking back to those days of boyhood bliss and found it sad that my youthful Huckleberry Finn haunts will never be the same. They weren’t there for my boys, and they won’t be for my precious grandson, Jordan, with his inquisitive grey-blue eyes, joyful gait, curiosity oozing from his pores. Now that special place has been discovered by adults, who bring with them the law-and-order crowd bent on eliminating ”mischief.” Today, such authority figures would surely pursue free-roaming boys of Mark Twain fabric to teach them young that there are rules to be followed, and enforced. Possession of things like matches, cigarettes and fireworks, hunting or jack knives, girlie mags and BB guns are today taboo, certainly punishable by, at the very least, stifling probationary scrutiny aimed toward the path to conformity.

Such enforcers were of a different ilk in my day, when they were the kid next door’s dad, probably veterans of either the European or Pacific theaters, definitely clear-headed on the difference between kid’s stuff and crime. Back then you could carry a pocket knife that wasn’t a deadly weapon, carve initials into a tree that weren’t interpreted as criminal ”tagging,” and step out of a storm and into an abandoned shed or barn without being charged for trespassing. You could even build a spacious fort in a dense white-pine grove without facing charges for destruction of personal property. Yes indeed, times have changed, and not necessarily for the better. But let’s not digress. It’s goats we’re talking about, isn’t it; white goats on the North Sugarloaf ridge? Oh yeah, now it’s coming back to me.

Whew!

It only took one phone call to a dear old friend to confirm the Sugarloaf goats’ presence. Praise the wonders of cell phones when you know the source you’re hunting is at work, probably somewhere deep in the Whately Glen reservation. He’s a part-time police officer, has been for many years, and I knew he’d have information. Fact was he hadn’t heard a word about goats this year, but did remember reports from last summer, so they’ve been around for a while. He had no idea where they came from. Maybe wild by now. Possibly escaped from the experimental UMass farm on River Road. Maybe from the private citizen who keeps penned goats off Hillside Road. Unlikely that either party would just set them loose to roam free, though. Could they survive the winter? He didn’t think so, but he didn’t rule it out.

Maybe someone who reads this will come forward and explain what’s happening on North Sugarloaf. Maybe the goats follow hikers and bikers around like pets. Maybe they run away. Who knows? Someone must.

Then again, maybe it’s the simple case of an owner who eats goat meat and prefers the free-range variety, kind of like Whole Foods, or the olden days when pigs were allowed to roam free in the woods around the Boston Township forts. There was enough wild food available then and now. If so, the beasts are probably happy to be free from barbed-wire containment on a beautiful ridge to roam, many nuts and berries, beautiful vista. I know. I enjoyed my boyhood freedom there. So did my pals. No supervision, no high-and-tight rules and regs. Just a band of free-range kids in the Mark Twain mold who grew up with the devil in their eyes, exuding personality, independence and, later, a healthy distrust of government — all undesirable qualities in today’s cookie-cutter America of decaying schools, expansive malls, standardized tests, and an alarming number of new spit-shined prisons.

A better way?

Uh-ah!

Not in my mind.